Some random title…I don’t fucking know…

Ok coming up with witty titles is hard, especially when you’re not quite sure what you want to write about yet. So in this instance “you” is “me”. Bad grammar? Bite me. (That was aimed at Dom, who criticized my grammar in an email.)

I don’t even know why I started one, a post I mean, just that I felt like writing.

Right now, I am on MSN with Julia. Before that I was on with Vania. I mean, I’m still with Vania. This does NOT sound like cheating.

Julia dropped me a line on Facebook asking if I was online. I wasn’t. So when I was I said so. Comments were exchanged, and Julia came on MSN and started talking to me. At first Vania and I thought she would ask me about Monash tomorrow, and I was a tad disappointed because I thought Julia was going to, you know, strike up an exciting conversation with me.

I think the way I structured that sentence is about to confuse you, because I was wrong about being wrong.

Julia is now talking to me exactly how I thought she would be talking to me before I thought she would be talking to me about Monash. And I am really honestly enjoying it. I enjoy the fact that she’s talking to me properly (not like…not that she usually I dunno grunts at me) and I enjoy talking to her past grunts. Metaphorical ones, of course.

It just seems that sometimes I am missing the huge amounts of gratitude that I owe people. Whether they were being nice “out of duty as a friend” (to paraphrase myself) or if they actually give a shit, I still owe them a thanks. But sometimes, and it’s not that I forget, but I just don’t feel the gratitude towards them because their care didn’t actually SOLVE the problem I was having, and if anything, at the time, their care made me feel worse. But as social conventions require, I thank them and I say I’m okay.

I am okay now, though, in all honesty on my stupid blog, I am okay now. But what am I mean to say then? “No I’m shit, but hey look there is honestly NOTHING you can do to help.” That doesn’t make them feel better. People – and this is so cynical – try to help other people because by being all humanitarian they in turn feel better themselves. So if I deny them that chance to feel better for themselves, then I just made someone else unhappy.

I’m coming off as a liar, I know. I’d meant that…seeing as they can’t do anything anyway, let them have their good feelings. Because in the end, it’s the people who seriously, genuinely (and be honest to yourself here, you know if you GENUINELY care) want to help that won’t stop at a “yeah I’m okay” because they can tell if something’s wrong.

Shit this is one of my worst grammatical posts yet.

Okay, this isn’t going to lead anywhere, but I’ve written out half a thousand words I’m not backspacing it now.

Thank you, Julia.

Alex.

What’s left?

That was a pun. “What’s left” was my insanely punny way of saying “what’s wrong?”

I won’t be able to reproduce the arguments exactly, or at all, really. And I hope Bee’s okay with my posting of it here.

On the train ride home today, with Fel and Bee, Bee started a discussion about the Saudi Arabians stoning women to death for a certain reason within their society. I think it was as a sort of punishment for committing a crime but I really can’t remember.

Bee put to us that we really shouldn’t (or rather, not “shouldn’t” but that it doesn’t really achieve anything if we) decide and see whether it is “right” or “wrong” for them to do this. Their society and culture does not view it as “wrong” and we only see it as such because we were brought up to see it that way.

My basic argument had been that it is wrong and we can say that it is wrong even without understanding fully their culture because every human has a intrinsic right to live, and to take away that right (or the “arbitrary deprivation of their lives”) is intrinsically wrong.

Bee countered (along with Fel) that it is not actually our “right” to live. “Rights” were  a convention set up by society. Sure, we have the “will” to live, but in certain situations that will to live does not amount to anything significant.

(This, by the way, is a horrendously abridged version of the debate we had, and in the wrong chronological order as well.)

Thus, by convention, we believe that the stoning of these women are “wrong”. Are they actually “wrong”? And what is “wrong”? By saying that such acts are wrong, it does not do anything to help or stop it from happening, and really “it’s just them complaining” (in the slightly paraphrased words of Bianca herself).

I then put to her that, “Yes, it is just complaining. But by complaining you are at least giving that slight possibility of something BEING done, whereas if you don’t complain nothing will be done and that’s that. It’s like a kid complaining to his mom about being hit by his brother. Complaining about it MIGHT get the mom to tell the brother off, or the brother to stop, but not complaining about it will just make him keep going, or make the situation worse.”

That stopped Bianca for while, but we’d also gone on to another topic.

Are humans intrinsically evil?

I’d put that, yes, humans are intrinsically evil. Take for example the Stanford Experiment. When given the power and the authority, all humans will inevitably start relishing in the power, and abusing it and whomever their power grants them command over.

Fel had argued that while humans may have evil parts in them, intrinsically, it is also true that there are purely good parts in everyone. Absolutely everyone. Bianca agreed, saying that even Hitler had good parts in him, because despite what his actions really were, to him they were the “right thing” (and here is that term again) and his acting upon these beliefs show he is a good person (was that your point, Bianca?)

The discussion then petered out at that point. No one “won” per se but I think Bianca had the slight upper hand in the end, regarding the Saudi Arabian argument.

What is it that you believe? Were those actions wrong? Were those actions justified by the cultural differences? Is society to blame? Is there actually no way of determining whether those actions are right because, in the end, there is no such thing as “right”?

Alex.

P.S. I’m not going to be patronizing, just helpful. If by chance anyone who read this wasn’t sure what “intrinsically” actually means:

Princeton: belonging to a thing by its very nature; “form was treated as something intrinsic, as the very essence of the thing”- John Dewey

So sort of like saying “water is intrinsically wet”. Sort of.